The Trump Administration Defangs the Endangered Species Act

The Trump administration has escalated efforts to roll back environmental regulations, including the Endangered Species Act.

The administration is stripping a core aspect of the law, telling people they won't get in trouble for killing endangered species so long as they didn't mean to target them.

The law protects more than 1,600 animals and plants threatened with extinction and prohibits taking them, which includes harassing, harming, or killing. The word 'harm' has been interpreted to include habitat modification, a definition upheld by the Supreme Court in 1990.

A judge ruled that damage to habitat constitutes harm under the Endangered Species Act, setting a precedent that habitat destruction is illegal.

Incidental take permits allow projects to proceed if developers mitigate harm to endangered species, often through conservation offsets.

The Supreme Court upheld the interpretation that significant habitat modification counts as harm under the Endangered Species Act.

Harm requires intentional targeting of a specific animal, and broad habitat modification interpretations impose unfair financial burdens.

The memo states that for a death or injury to be illegal, it must be intentional, applying Scalia's dissent broadly.

Inadvertent harm, like a vessel striking a whale or felling a tree with bats, is not a violation unless done with the purpose of killing the animals.

Most endangered animals are killed incidentally, not targeted, so the intent requirement could remove incentives to avoid collateral damage.

Some critically endangered species with very low populations could be tipped toward extinction by these measures.

Habitat conservation plans create ripple effects that nurture many other species, so weakening them has broad indirect impacts.

Wildlife advocates and states have sued over the changes, and there is concern the conservative Supreme Court could enshrine them.

The litigation will likely drag on for a long time even as protections are rolled back on the ground.

Biodiversity loss is a huge, underappreciated problem that threatens ecosystems essential for a healthy economy. Business organizations have cited biodiversity loss as a huge risk for the economy, challenging the growth-versus-conservation binary.

President Trump barred CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House, disabling their badges and catching officials off guard.

The White House is drafting an executive order to create a committee that could veto NIH grants not conforming to Trump's political agenda.